SFI activist held for assaulting T P Sreenivasan

A day after former diplomat and Rediff.com columnist T P Sreenivasan was manhandled by Students Federation of India activists near Thiruvananthapuram, the prime accused, who slapped him, was arrested on Saturday.

City police commissioner S Sparjan Kumar said the prime accused, SFI leader J S Sarath, who was absconding soon after the incident, was arrested from a tea shop in Thiruvananthapuram on Saturday evening.

He was arrested under various charges including Indian Penal Code Sections 332 (voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from his duty) and 341 (wrongfully restraining any person), he said.

Police also initiated disciplinary action against five policemen, who were on duty at the venue of the Global Education Meet at Kovalam, where the incident occurred.

The ‘erring’ policemen would be sent for intensive refresher training as part of the departmental action.

“Two sub-inspectors and three constables will be sent for intensive refresher training at KeralaPoliceAcademy in Thrissur. An oral inquiry has also been ordered into the incident,” a top police official said.

There were allegations that police had remained mute spectators while Sreenivasan, who is also the vice chairman and executive head of Kerala State Higher Education Council, was attacked.

Meanwhile, Communist Party of India-Marxist veteran and opposition leader V S Achuthanandan demanded strict action against the SFI activists who attacked the former diplomat.

CPI-M politburo member Pinarayi Vijayan also said that the agitators had crossed the limit and the party cannot approve these kind of personal attacks.

The party’s district secretary Kadakampally Surendran had apologised on Friday itself for the misbehaviour of agitators belonging to SFI, the student wing of the CPI-M.

SFI activists had attacked Sreenivasan during their protest against the ‘commercialisation of higher education’ near the venue.

Sreenivasan was the former Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations, Vienna, and Ambassador to Austria and Slovenia.